


with just our voices (like gunshots, like music)

by planets_waltzing



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 03:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19142746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/planets_waltzing/pseuds/planets_waltzing
Summary: When the world wants to end, it's going to end.The Hargreeves decide to spend the last days they have with each other.





	with just our voices (like gunshots, like music)

**Author's Note:**

> I swear, I'm gonna write happier fic, I swear. However, I'm still cutting my teeth here and I hope no one minds me posting my practice.

When it's all said and done, if the world wants to end, it's going to end.

Maybe not entirely, maybe not in the way you'd expect, but there are going to be drastic measures taken, changes no one anticipated. It will morph and twist and writhe until you can't recognize it. The world that emerges, it's not the world it had been.

This is the lesson they are learning, this is the truth they have to face.

With all the power resting within them, with the fury and the fight and the fear, there's still no stopping it. The dead, hungry creatures move in twos and threes and more. They travel in packs, tearing down the world as they create paths through what had once been the modern world. 

Now though, it's just rubble, it's just a world gone by.

~

Alison knows her daughter is dead and it weighs on her in a way that shows itself by all the things she doesn't say. 

Her hands shake every now and then though, no trigger, rhyme or reason. They tremble so hard she has significant trouble holding the glass of whiskey Luther has poured for her. She slams it back anyway.

She looks at the rest of them, the family she loved, lost and found again, and feels incomplete.

Then she downs the alcohol in one shot and lets her eyes close as the liquid starts to leave her fuzzy.

Her hands still shake.

~

Luther can't believe it.

He can't believe there's not an answer, not a way to stop this, not...anything.

He tries, he really does, and there's nothing to be found, nothing any of them can do to make this better, nothing but letting it happen, letting the ending wash over everything.

Every now and then he thinks about the moon, about gathering as many people as he could and getting them all up there. Somehow.

He pulls back the bottle as Allison takes her drink, watching the way she moves and knowing, in the deepest, darkest part of him, that if he asked her to go with him, to run, she would say no.

~

Five is really fucking annoyed.

He went through so much to try and stop this, to save everyone, to get back to his family.

And someone, somewhere fucked it up _all over again_.

Except for this time, there's no information to go off of, and no jumping seems to ever get him where he needs to be.

After a certain point, Five realizes that it's not annoyance but resignation. It's knowing that he can keep fighting it, or he can stay with his family for as long as they have left.

He touches Luther's shoulder and gestures for the bottle.

~

Vanya knows she can't help. She knows that even if she tried, she'd mess it up, twist it into something even worse than what they're already facing. She doesn't have enough control and the fear racing through her nowadays just makes it even worse.

She can do one thing though, she can make the screams softer, can quiet the gunshots, the sounds of bodies slamming into the windows, the doors, the world. She can make the sounds of the cracking glass just a little softer..

She knows more than the violin, though she's always been strongest with a bow in her hand. Still, she sits with the rest of them, drumming out the rhythms that dance around everyone. Her hands move, thumping against her legs, the table, the couch. 

If she keeps her hands moving, if she puts enough of herself into this simple act, maybe...

Maybe...

Five looks at her, smiles a little, and passes her the bottle.

Vanya takes it with one hand, her fingers tapping out a beat with the other.

~

Klaus spends a lot of time unconscious.

It's not any easier, the ghosts still find him in his dreams, and now there are just so many of them that even getting so high he can't remember his own name doesn't do much of anything.

Every now and then though, he sits up, blinks away the hazy, cotton-stuffed, feeling in his head and sees them, his family around him and it's....almost nice.

And then his heart starts to race, the ghosts start to howl, and he wonders if he's not the only one left. That the rest of them didn't leave him alone, tried to do something heroic and stupid and all ended up...

He looks over to Vanya, watches her fingers touch the tabletop, drumming a gentle heartbeat rhythm. She smiles at him, waves a little, then reaches out with her non-occupied hand and passes him a bottle of very fine whiskey.

~

Diego is restless, pacing the length of the house over and over again, itching to do something, anything, to fix this. More people keep dying and coming back, shuffling outside their door and it's driving him up a fucking wall to be pent up here and not out on the streets doing something.

But he's learned what happens when he goes out. He's seen what's waiting or him and it's all just a lot of death and nothing he can do to reverse it.

As it turns out, the only thing that stabbing a zombie does is to make it pissed and chances are, if you're still alive, you're not hitting the streets amongst the hungry swarming dead.

He tries to do other things, to go out and get supplies when needed, keep the rest of the same and anything else that can keep him moving but it's not enough.

It's never going to be enough.

Klaus is curled around the bottle but he can see there's not much left in it. Almost gently, he holds out a hand and lets his brother pass it to him.

~

Ben stays pretty quiet these days, even when he doesn't want to be. None of this is his fault and he knows that. However, he also knows that, sooner or later, he's going to be able to say as much as he wants to any and all of his siblings.

Is it wrong that it makes feel just a little happy? A little like it might be all right in the end? Even if 'the end' is more than what he bargained for?

It probably is. 

However, none of them are exceptionally good people and he's no different.

He watches as Diego almost finishes off the bottle, then looks to the rest of them. Each and every one of them looks so tired, so much like they're on their last drops.

Diego pours the last bit of the whiskey out as Ben says thanks to a room that can't quite hear him yet.

~

If the world wants to end, it's going to end.

Maybe it ends at sunset, or maybe in the morning. Maybe there's a thunderstorm, or a soft breeze in the air, blowing away the final sounds of those last few survivors.

Of course, the thing is, an apocalypse is an event, not an ending and death doesn't mean you've reached the final chapter of the story.

The world is not what it had been and it's anyone's guess as to what happens next.


End file.
